So it has been well over a month since I began blogging again. Nothing is less interesting than blogging about blogging, but Sunday mornings are for reflecting, so well...

In the three years since I began, blogging has come a long way. It is now pretty "mainstream"; lots of famous people blog, some people even have become famous through blogging, and the 'blogosphere' has become an important element of U.S. public life. Meanwhile I just continue has I have, reading blogs and filtering, and noting things of interest. Probably the main thing that's happened recently is that blogging is trying to become a business. But it just doesn't work. Nobody is willing to pay for reading blogs, so the only source of income is advertising, and very few blogs have sufficient traffic to generate much revenue from ads. Many readers like me consume blogs with an RSS reader (like SharpReader), and others visit blog sites using Firefox with Adblock, and hence don't even see the ads. Whatever drives people to blog - and I don't fully understand why I blog, let alone anyone else - it isn't money. I actually think it is ego. It is fun seeing your stuff up there in public, and even more fun realizing a bunch of people value it enough to come by and read it. And link to it.

I started out blogging because I wanted to write a book, and thought blogging would be a good way of prototyping. That may still happen - I hope so - although it turns out being CTO of a growing startup and father of a growing family appear to be incompatible with making time for writing. (That's my reason anyway, even if it isn't an excuse.) Meanwhile blogging remains fun, and so it remains something I do. Thanks for visiting, and please stay tuned!